The Language of Design: Theory and Computation Janet McDonnell, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London, UK, Andy Dong, Springer-Verlag, London, UK (2009) 194 pp., ISBN 978 1 84882 020 3, £81.00

摘要

The subject ot the book is the constitutive role of language in (doing) design. Working from the perspective that designing is performative, the book sets out to present the case for 'a linguistically informed conceptual apparatus to examine the relationship between performed design activities and ['design texts' which comprise] what is said and written during their performance' (p. 42). One major concern of the book is to show how the use of algorithms from computational linguistics supports exploration of aspects of the linguistic performance of design. The central chapters, Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 pursue claims linked to the overall thesis of the book which is that 'the language of design performatively enacts design through its semantics and grammatical structures' (p. 46). Chapters 3, 4 and 5 deal with three performative operators aggregation, accumulation and appraisal, respectively.